Rousey, who is close to White, says the White House show \u201cfell extremely short of expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
While still being finalized, the card features two championship fights. Brazil\u2019s Alex Periera will meet France\u2019s Ciryl Gane for the interim UFC heavyweight title. Then Spanish-Georgian lightweight champion Ilia Topuria takes on interim champ Justin Gaethje, one of just two Americans who currently hold even a share of the UFC\u2019s 11 championship belts.<\/p>\n
The White House did not answer questions about criticism of the card or the event’s aggressive politics. Instead, communications director Steven Cheung, said, \u201cThis will be one of the greatest and most historic sports events in history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cheung, a UFC spokesman before joining Trump’s 2016 campaign, called Trump\u2019s event “a testament to his vision to celebrate America\u2019s monumental 250th anniversary.\u201d<\/p>\n
A UFC spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump talks with UFC CEO Dana White during an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center on Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla.<\/p>\n
Evan Vucci, Associated Press<\/p>\n
Trump helped reinforce UFC’s mass appeal<\/p>\n
Once famously derided as \u201chuman cockfighting\u201d by late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., UFC has been a major sports league in the United States since signing a media-rights deal with ESPN in 2018, said Patrick Wyman, a historian and host of popular podcasts on the subject who is also a former longtime MMA journalist.<\/p>\n
Trump, a fixture at heavyweight boxing matches in the 1980s, gave UFC a boost a generation ago by hosting early bouts, including 2001\u2019s \u201cBattle on the Boardwalk,\u201d at his casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.<\/p>\n
Wyman said that even as Trump and White have remained close, UFC has deliberately prioritized building the league’s brand over that of its individual fighters. That has kept most stars from achieving crossover appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rousey, who is close to White, says the White House show \u201cfell extremely short of expectations.\u201d While still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,78388,785,85],"class_list":["post-570610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-lee-national","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}